


Space Song

by Michael_hearteyes_Wheeler



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Mileven, but its so small, okay maybe a dash of angst, pure fluff, so still mostly just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 13:02:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14694753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michael_hearteyes_Wheeler/pseuds/Michael_hearteyes_Wheeler
Summary: An overview of El's first few months back in Mike's life, and the relationship that blooms between them.





	Space Song

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! So this is a oneshot that I am writing for my friend Jazz, who shares my love of Mileven and music. This song is, in my opinion, the perfect Mike and El song, and it just needed a fic to go with it. So here it is! and I hope you all enjoy.

_ It was late at night, You held on tight _

_ From an empty seat, A flash of light _

 

“She’s back.” The realization hit Mike like a ton of bricks. It weighed on him heavily, and pressed in on him from all sides. Crushing, but warm. Like a hug. Like a snake constricting his lungs.

 

Of course he had known that, as a concept, the moment he saw her walk into the Byers house, decked out like a street tough with tears in her eyes. But it didn't become a fact until much later, there was too much at stake, too much going on, too much that could go wrong. He didn't let himself  _ feel _ the weight of this notion until days later. When the monster had been vanquished, Will had been saved, and the storm had passed. Not until things started to feel normal. Not until he would go to visit her at the cabin for the first time.

 

No, for those first few hours, it was just an idea. A thought. One that made him feel weak in the knees, and his palms sweat, and made him pace back and forth across Joyce’s living room, waiting for a set of headlights to flood the blackened yard.

 

When she came back to the Byers after closing the gate, she was weak. They all were really. She had broken blood vessels staining her skin, and protruding purple veins criss-crossing her neck, mirroring Will’s, who was in the next room. He found himself stealing glances at her while she slept on the couch.

 

_ “She’s just drained.” _ He thought.  _ “Like a bad battery.” _ He smiled to himself. Words he had said in what felt like another lifetime. Even now, as she slept silently save for the occasion stir, he was awed by her power. Even then, before she disappeared into a dimension beyond comprehension, he had felt her energy transcending whatever veiled them. Because she was strong. Like a magnet. Pulling him towards her without even knowing.

 

And when a brief nightmare that evening caused the lights above to flicker, he held her hand. The lights stilled and he smiled. She squeezed his hand in her sleep, and still he was amazed by her.

 

_ It will take a while, To make you smile _

_ Somewhere in these eyes, I'm on your side _

 

It wasn't then, however, that he understood fully the gravity of the situation.

 

It wasn't when he bounced eagerly in his chair all day at school, waiting for the final bell to ring. It wasn't the sporadic and somewhat clumsy mad dash for his bike after it rang. It wasn't the long high-speed bike ride to her house, or the somewhat slower walk he took from the road into the woods. It wasn't even seeing her open the door. While it made him smile, and it made his heart skip a beat, it wasn't any of those things that set reality in motion for him.

 

It was seeing her smile back at him.

 

They pulled each other into a tender embrace, far less dramatic than the one on the night of her closing the gate, and his mind flashed backward in time. To the scared girl he found in the woods, who wouldn't talk, or look at anyone directly. He knew from the moment he saw her that she was in trouble, and oh how naive he had been to think there was a thing in the world his damn parents could do about it.

 

He remembered the next morning, when she had looked him in the eye, and explained to the best of her ability, her situation. It was the first time she really looked at him, and it felt more like she was seeing  _ through  _ him. He felt that, in an instant, he became overwhelmingly aware that he was in over his head, but that he would do anything in his is power to keep them both from danger.

 

That day, all those months ago, showing her around his house, trying just to make her smile. Just a kid with a fluttering in his chest because of a pretty girl he knew nothing about. And here she was, a year later, smiling at him without a trace of fear in her eyes. With no hidden uncertainty, or unease. That was when it hit him deeply, almost painfully that El was back. That El was  _ home. _

 

And even more so, that she was an entirely new person.

 

_ You wide-eyed girls You get it right _

_ Fall back into place _

 

As the day went on, Mike found it staggering just what an effect El had on him. Her laugh gave him goosebumps, her curly hair made him smile, and her hand in his made him feel almost dizzy.

 

He also realized, with a bit of uncertainty, what she meant when she said she had heard him every one of those 353 days. It came when she told him what his favorite comic book was.

 

“Superman #233.” She had interrupted him, a small smile playing on her face while he prattled off the titles of the comics he had gotten for his birthday. It was small tidbit of information, but it stunned him for a moment.

 

“How- how did you know that?” Mikes mouth hung open.

 

“You told me.” El shrugged. “The night of your birthday. Day 240. You were excited and talked for a long time that night.”

 

El spoke as if it were all common facts, and he thought that in her mind it probably was. But it struck him with the realization that she must know so many small and intimate details of his life, while he knew almost none about hers. Over the year he had spent speaking to her ghost, he had tried to come up with any and all information to give her. Sometimes it felt like his own personal and strange alternative to keeping a journal. And she had listened, and absorbed. And he was certain that he wanted to spend the rest of forever learning each and every thing about her.

 

So he did. He spent the rest of that day, cozy in the cabin, asking her a million questions the way she had once asked him for every answer she didn't know. He learned that her favorite color was the soft pink on her quilt (like the one of the first dress she had ever worn). He learned her favorite movie was Casablanca, and that she loved the melodramatic soaps that played in grainy washes of over-saturation on the cabins small TV. She loved learning about plants, and she loved reading even though it was still difficult at times. Her list of favorite foods now included whipped cream, sprinkles, and pink lemonade _ ‘even though Hop says that isn't a food’ _ .

 

He tried his best to absorb each and every detail of her, the way she had done for those 353 days, and he found it easy. As easy as breathing. He  _ wanted _ to know her. He wanted to know El. not the frightened and quiet shuttin he had kept hidden in his basement, but the soft spoken and kind girl who looked at the world with a wide-eyed fascination. 

 

He never wanted to stop learning who El was, and with her head rested on his shoulder while they watched her soaps, he thought he would never have to.

 

_ Tender is the night For a broken heart _

_ Who will dry your eyes When it falls apart? _

 

As much as he wanted to, as much as he prayed he could stay in that moment forever, eventually he had to go home.

 

Jim was nice enough to give him a ride, and El was sweet enough to give him a small yet meaningful kiss goodbye. He felt his lips tingle even as he laid in bed, trying to sleep.

 

Sleep don't come easy however. There was a buzzing deep in his gut, that rattled his bones and made him unable to lay comfortably in his bed. Then and there, he got a thought, one that made him smile and jump out of bed before he even finished thinking it. Carefully, he made his way into the basement and took his usual seat in the fort. He had not spent much time in it since she had come home, and he found that it no longer felt hollow or sad to be inside of it. It felt like where he belonged.

 

He turned on the supercom that still laid propped up against a discarded throw pillow, and switched to the proper channel. He wasn't sure if El would be sleeping, or reading in bed, but he somehow knew that she would be listening. So he spoke.

 

“Hi El, its me. Its Mike. I know I just saw you but... I guess I miss you already.” He took a shaky breath. “That probably sounds dumb but it's true.”

 

He waited for a moment, listening to the gentle static that no longer felt so lonely, and then he heard her voice.

 

“Mike.” El sounded small. Far away. Maybe just tired, but maybe...

 

“El!?” He was all at once impressed with his timing, and shell shocked at the voice he had waited a year to hear through the waves of white noise. “Oh man, did I wake you up?”

 

“No,” A pause, and a deep breathe, and then a sniffle. “I... I had a  _ flashback _ .”  Mike could hear the way the painful word hung heavily in her breathe. A word she most certainly learned from Hopper. A word she most certainly only knew because of its frequent use.

 

“El, im so sorry.” Mike licked his lips, not knowing what to say in a situation like this. Then he remembered something she had said about falling asleep often to the sounds of him, or hopper, reading to her. “Do you want me to read you something?”

 

“Yes please.” El sniffled again, but he could hear the small smile in her voice.

 

So he did. He picked out his old and tattered copy of Lord of The Rings off of the basement shelf and read to her until he heard peaceful and heavy breathing coming through the static. He  _ felt _ something too. Almost like there was a weight in the air next to him. Almost like she was laying in the fort.  _ Her _ fort. He thought that maybe she was.

 

He clicked off the supercom and put the book back on the shelf, and before he turned to head back to his room he took one last look at her fort. For a split second, in the darkness, he almost  _ saw _ her sleeping peacefully there. Just like she had last November, only this time she was really safe in her own bed across town. He grinned to himself, feeling in awe of her all over again.

 

_ What makes this fragile world go round? _

_ Were you ever lost? Was she ever found? _

 

This routine continued over the next few months. Mike would go to visit, and he would spend hours learning who El was. Each new piece of information he learned, he found himself falling for her only more.

 

Her sense of humor was uncharacteristically sharp, her words were always soft. She loved learning with the eagerness of the rest of the party during any one of Mr. Clarkes lectures. She hated brussel sprouts. She loved listening to Hopper’s old records, and she loved Will’s mixtapes even more. She couldn't draw to save her life, but she loved doing it anyway. She was mesmerized by lighting, but jumped at the thunder. She giggled at horror movies, and teared up at her soaps.

 

It was early spring when Mike realized that he just might be in love with El.

 

Not that he would tell her, or anyone else for that matter. At least not yet, but it was true nonetheless. He felt bound to her like the moon is bound to the earth. Or rather, the way the earth is bound to the sun.

 

He couldn't help but feel that way. When he had first met her, it was easy to like her the way other boys liked girls. She was beautiful, interesting, mysterious, and who wouldn't fall head over heels for a superhero? But now, that feeling was magnified by a million, because El was also amazing.

 

She was kind, and funny, and witty, and stubborn. She made him laugh, she made him smile, she made him frustrated. El made Mike love her.

 

And eventually, slowly, he felt that maybe he knew her just as well as she knew him. He could recite all of her favorite things from memory, he could read her silent body language, and he had an uncanny ability to guess exactly how she felt.

 

El was no longer a stranger that he missed for reasons above his own comprehension, she was a best friend that he loved.

 

_ Fall back into place _

_ Fall back into place _   
  


And one sunny day in June, when Hopper had decided to let her and Mike go for a walk as long as they stayed close together, he made a decision that would change both of their lives forever. It seemed that their lives were always changing, but maybe that's just the painful beauty of being young.

 

El was enraptured by little yellow moths that danced around an open, sunlit clearing. She had spent a few minutes telling him that they were not, in fact, butterflies as he had said, but moths. She had learned that in a book of insects that Dustin gave her. She watched them sweetly, a small smile pulling on the corners of her lips. The yellow light wrapped around her face, making her look golden and warm.

 

Mike watched her for a moment, feeling his heartbeat out of rhythm each time she glanced his way. How could a person with so much pain be so soft and kind? How could a person capable of flipping vans, and fighting monsters still be excited to watch butterflies in a field? How could the same scared girl he found in these very woods be the one sitting next to him?

 

Because El Hopper was perfect. In every sense of the word that he could think of.

 

So he took her hand, and looked into her eyes, and said the words that he thought each and every time he saw her. “El? I Love you.”

 

She looked back at him with a face that could only be described as blissful, and she hooked her arms around his neck. “I love you too, Mike.” And she kissed him.

 

It wasn't the small and brief kisses they had shared before, but it was no less innocent. It was deep and powerful, and if she hadn't been holding him he probably would have fallen onto the grass underneath them. And he kissed her back, feeling warm, and care free, and loved, and loving. Feeling in awe of her as always, and feeling weightless.

 

El Hopper was home. She was back from the dead. She was in his arms, and if he had any say about it at all, she always would be. 

 

_ Fall back into place _

_ Fall back into place _


End file.
